Mike Geiger, MBA, CPA

Source: AFP Global News

One of AFP’s highest priorities is to deliver top-notch, best practice fundraising education. With our mission to advance ethical and effective fundraising, professional education is part of our core. It’s what members of the fundraising community—and those in the nonprofit sector and beyond—look for from AFP.

But education can’t be the only thing that AFP does, because fundraising education isn’t the only factor that affects your success. Our effectiveness is hampered by boards and executive directors that don’t understand fundraising. Our ability to succeed is hindered by toxic cultures and bad bosses that don’t support employee growth. Our impact is limited by environments where ethics is given only lip service.

AFP can’t be just a subject matter trainer and educator. We also have to be an advocate for the fundraising profession in the workplace—to help you create cultures of philanthropy and ethics, to understand how to work more effectively with staff, and to be able to lead above, below and even sideways.

To help address those issues and ensure your success, we searched far and wide for great partners and best-in-class, gold-standard initiatives. We found them, and that’s why I’m so excited about the three announcements I made during the Opening General Session of our recent AFP ICON in San Antonio.

The first announcement is AFP 360°—a series of career management and leadership development tools offered in partnership with Korn Ferry, one of the most prestigious executive search and management consulting firms in the world.As the name implies, AFP 360° is a comprehensive tool that offers skills assessments, a vast library of resources, resume architecture assistance and artificial intelligence coaching for your presentation skills. AFP 360° provides you an understanding of your strengths and weaknesses, the skills you need to develop and areas of potential growth as a professional and a leader. The core services of AFP 360° are provided at no cost to you (additional services available for a small fee).

The second announcement is a new partnership with the American Association of University Women (AAUW) to offer negotiation workshops to all members—also at no cost to you. AAUW originally designed these workshops to help close the gender salary gap by providing women with skills to negotiate better salaries and benefits. AFP’s most recent study found that female fundraisers make ten percent less than their male colleagues.

Through our special partnership, all members of AFP can sign up to take this online workshop and learn important skills that are critical in all types of negotiations—talking with donors, making “the ask,” negotiating the gift, or addressing tough topics with colleagues, just to mention a few. You’ll also learn critical data on the gender salary gap that AAUW has compiled—they’ve done such impressive work on this!

The third initiative is establishing October as Ethics Month. Every October—the beginning of the “giving season”—we’re going to shine a spotlight on ethics in fundraising and the entire nonprofit sector. Of course, ethics is important all the time. But in October we’re going to have special programming, activities and other resources to educate members, the nonprofit sector and the public at large about the importance of ethics and how AFP advances ethical fundraising every day.

I had originally wanted to go live with AFP 360° and our AAUW partnership on May 1. Due to a variety of reasons, we’ll be launching our AAUW partnership in mid-May and our AFP 360° service on May 31. You’ll see news and activities for Ethics Month over the next few months leading up to October.

These initiatives embody my vision for AFP: a fundraising community that encompasses both fundraising skills and education while addressing workplace culture, management, diversity and inclusion, leadership and so much more. And AFP is uniquely positioned to provide this combination of benefits and programs—no one else in the sector offers you these benefits.

As you can see from these announcements, AFP is committed to enhancing member value. We will continue to serve as your colleague, mentor and guide, providing programs that will strengthen the profession, enhance the voice of fundraisers across society and increase giving and the impact members make every single day.

Thank you for being part of the AFP community!